Over the 45 years or so in which I have been programming, I've seen quite a few styles, conventions, practices, methodologies, even languages (pick the term that suits you) which have promised clarity and reusability.

It is the continuing evolution of this discipline that has led us to "classes" in PHP as one of the current favored methodologies. But remember, there was a time when COBOL was the Holy Grail ( MOVE YES TO I-AM-TIRED-OF-TYPING ). COBOL, along with Edward Yourdan's "Structured Programming" in the late 1970's, was the flavor of the month, and served its purpose. Yourdan himself moved on to Object Oriented Programming about 15 years later.

My point in mentioning all this is that each methodology has contributed techniques which have advanced our ability to interact with and direct computing hardware to perform tasks for us. None is optimal for all tasks, and most can be made to do any task, albeit with difficulty.

Rather than direct our energies into debates about whether procedural global code or classes is "better", if "better" is even appropriate to say, let's take from classes that which we can, blend it with that which we have had, and look with anticipation towards the next evolutionary step.